


When the Long Trick's Over

by helwolves



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Anal Sex, M/M, Mild Angst, Pirate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-09-21
Updated: 2005-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-19 17:08:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4754333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helwolves/pseuds/helwolves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Obi-Wan Kenobi is a privateer. So is his childhood friend, Quinlan Vos. But the line between privateer and pirate was never a clear one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the Long Trick's Over

**Author's Note:**

> _*digs up decade-old fic to repost in lieu of finishing anything current*_ So I spent a period of time in Star Wars LJ fandom around Episode III. I was doing a little series of short genre AU interludes and this is the one I still like, so here it is for AO3 posterity. Vos is a character from the Republic comics, who was doing questionable undercover Dark Side stuff for the Jedi, having his loyalty doubted, you see, hence the... never mind, no one's likely to read this who doesn't know who he is anyway. ~~I still love you, Quin.~~ (Originally posted September 21, 2005.)

_I must down to the seas again to the vagrant gypsy life._  
_To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;_  
_And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,_  
_And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over._  
—John Masefield, “Sea-Fever”

 

Obi-Wan woke to the sound of his own head pounding like island drums. He’d never been so glad of the fact that a ship this size had no means of letting sunlight into her cabin.

The steady creaking of the small boat’s rigging almost lulled him back to sleep, but a heavy, unmoving pressure against his bare chest finally forced him to open his eyes.

An arm. Quinlan’s arm. Tattooed and scarred, lines on top of lines, shifting with each small twitch of muscle beneath the skin. Skin that was even darker than he remembered, and aged, transformed by months on the open water, by the wind and a relentless equatorial sun.

Obi-Wan traced his fingers along a yellow geometric pattern, reassuringly familiar though almost unrecognizable there among a network of jagged white scars and the alien lines of newer ink. And then Quin’s arm jerked, and the man laughed, shifting so suddenly that the too-small cot beneath them creaked in protest.

“Mornin’,” he said, before thoughtfully snapping his teeth against Obi-Wan’s collarbone.

Stretching, yawning, feeling every sore joint and fresh bruise from the tavern brawl the night before that had slowly begun sifting itself back into his memory, Obi-Wan offered only a token noise of protest. Quin grinned and crawled over him, leaning in for a lazy kiss. His mouth still tasted of last night’s rum and the metallic bite of drying blood, and Obi-Wan began to remember other things as well, and grinned back.

“You should stay here,” Quin said, half mumbled, his mouth pressed to Obi-Wan’s neck. “You belong here. Not carrying pleas to governors and princes with tin crowns.” He nipped at the pale skin beneath Obi-Wan’s ear, at the edge of his beard, eliciting a groan and then dragging his lips and tongue wetly along all the stubble-rough places that made Obi-Wan writhe. “Your place is with me, out here on the rim....”

“I have —” Obi-Wan gasped, shaken. He slid one hand behind Quinlan’s head, fingers curling there and pressing to still him. “I have duties.”

Quin’s reply was barely a whisper against Obi-Wan’s chest. “As do I.”

“Do you yet?” said Obi-Wan. And the words hung horribly in the stifling air for a long moment; Obi-Wan ached for a way to make them signify something other than what both men knew they did.

“And what does that mean?” His voice was low and dangerous, the solid weight of his body pressed against the length of Obi-Wan’s becoming a sudden challenge.

“I’ve seen things,” said Obi-Wan, his jaw tight with the familiar strain of saying things that needed to be said. “And I’ve heard the stories, my friend. About Korto Vos.” He paused, feeling the muscles in Quinlan’s arms go rigid. “Korto Vos the _pirate_.”

“Well,” said Quin, “they do like to tell stories out here, don’t they?” He lifted his head, looked up to meet Obi-Wan’s eyes. “It isn’t true. I’m just a privateer. Same as _you_. Same as I always have — I _am_!” he barked suddenly, his voice rough with a quality Obi-Wan never thought he’d hear from the man. Something pleading, something desperate. “I’m still...”

“No,” Obi-Wan said softly, twisting his hand through the thick tangles of Quin’s hair, pulling him back down. “I know.”

Quinlan crushed their mouths together, pressed Obi-Wan into the rough cot with all he had, all the weight of himself and of everything else he carried. And Obi-Wan could feel himself slipping, going pliant under the assault, but he didn’t care. His hands gripped Quin’s hair, his neck, his broad shoulders, pulling him closer still.

He _was_ the same man. Obi-Wan had not needed to lie when he spoke. The same man he’d known so many years ago. The man he’d learned to fight with, to drink with, to fuck with, perhaps even to laugh with. It didn’t matter that two pistols and a cutlass now hung at Quin’s belt instead of a saber. Not to him.

Quinlan made a noise that was almost a laugh, but more a grunt of frustration, his fingers fumbling with the half-tied laces of Obi-Wan’s trousers until Obi-Wan felt the cotton itself give way, and then Quin’s hand was plunging inside and gripping him, stroking him. His skin was rope-roughened and scarred and Obi-Wan bucked into the harsh pleasure of it, arched and cried out when Quin eventually reached round and pressed two fingers inside him, slick with something he likely didn’t _want_ to know the identity of.

When Quin shoved at his shoulder, Obi-Wan turned over easily, every muscle thrumming, pushed himself up with arms braced as Quin knelt behind him, leaned, pushed inside, a slow invasion that Obi-Wan welcomed more with every small, teasing roll of his hips. Quin swore in a language Obi-Wan wasn’t sure he recognized, pulling Obi-Wan up and against him with one arm around his waist, the other hand on his chest, palm splayed flat.

Obi-Wan wondered briefly, deliriously, if Quin could feel how his heart was pounding — a strange rhythm, nothing like the gentle rocking of the small boat, or the familiar shifts of their bodies moving together.

He tensed when he came, a flare of starlight through his nerves that sent him collapsing onto his stomach, arms useless at his sides, Quinlan still arched over him, still inside him though Obi-Wan knew that Quin had reached his climax not long before his own. Obi-Wan closed his eyes and thought carefully about breathing.

Everything around him seemed magnified, as though he could somehow sense the whole world beyond himself.

The dark plunge of the ocean beneath the cabin. The waves crashing gently, relentlessly, against the island in the distance. The warm, solid weight of Quin on his back. The thick ropes of the man’s braided hair, smelling of seawater and straw, threaded here and there with beads and shells that clacked together and rested coolly against Obi-Wan’s feverish skin.

Quinlan pressed a damp kiss to the back of Obi-Wan’s neck. “You should stay.”

“Perhaps,” said Obi-Wan, allowing himself for a moment to pretend that the imperial orders he carried were mere scraps, to wonder whether the war being fought on the seas was not somehow less destructive than the one being fought on this ship by one man, alone. “Perhaps I should.”


End file.
